Wild tigers depend on abundant prey populations to survive. When hunting and poaching deplete deer, wild boar, and other prey species, tigers face chronic food insecurity, range compression, and increased conflict with humans.
Prey depletion causes tigers to experience chronic nutritional stress — hunger that drives riskier hunting behaviour, longer travel distances, and increased physiological strain. Female tigers with depleted ranges struggle to raise cubs to independence, increasing cub mortality. Tigers forced into human-dominated landscapes for livestock prey face escalating persecution. The welfare dimension extends to prey species themselves: unsustainable bushmeat hunting causes suffering across the prey community that sustains the entire ecosystem. Protecting prey populations is thus both a tiger welfare and a broader wildlife welfare intervention.